China Boosts Military Spending By 11.2 Percent
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China announced this week that its military budget would rise 11.2 percent this year, on top of the 12.7 increase from the previous year. With the new budget, China’s military spending will cross the $100 billion mark for the first time, renewing existing concerns over China’s military agenda.
In recent years, the People’s Liberation Army has had double-digit budget increases, spending that has helped established China’s position as a growing international and regional power.
China announced this week that its military budget would rise 11.2 percent this year, on top of the 12.7 increase from the previous year. With the new budget, China’s military spending will cross the $100 billion mark for the first time, renewing existing concerns over China’s military agenda.
In recent years, the People’s Liberation Army has had double-digit budget increases, spending that has helped established China’s position as a growing international and regional power.
Speaking at the National People’s Congress in Beijing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the move was important for the PLS to ‘win local wars under information-age conditions.’
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Last year, the United States promised to increase its presence in the region, a move that analysts say is to counter China’s rising dominance.
The spokesperson for the NPC, Li Zhaoxing, urged calm over China’s spending program:
[quote] China is committed to the path of peaceful development and follows a national defence policy that is defensive in nature. China has 1.3 billion people, a large territory and long coastline, but our defence spending is relatively low compared with other major countries. [/quote]Washington, in contrast with Beijing, spends almost $740 billion each year in defense and already has troops and bases stationed across the region.
In terms GDP to defense spending, China’s official military budget is far lower than the United States or that of the United Kingdom ($64 billion).
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According to a Time report:
[quote] China’s annual growth in military spending has averaged over 10% for more than a decade, though yearly increases have varied. From 2006 to ’08 the average annual increase was 18%, but that dropped to 7.5% in 2010 amid the global economic slowdown. [/quote]While China’s military spending lags behind the United States’, China’s spending hikes give it a defense budget larger than all other Asian nations combined – a sobering statistic when one considers that this includes the world’s third largest economy (Japan) and North and South Korea, which remain locked in a Cold War era standoff, said Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation.
Across the region, China is engaged in an ongoing spat with Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan over oil and gas rich waters and a protracted territorial land dispute with India.
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